Heart So Hollow (Dire Wolves Book 1), page 52
When I walk over to it to inspect it, I note that it wasn’t pulled loose by a fallen limb, the wire isn’t old and deteriorated, and the rest of the wires connected to the poles along the road are still intact.
This wire is cut clean.
I lift my head and methodically scan the trees before slowly turning and starting back up the driveway to the house. As soon as I reach my 4Runner, I hear a faint bark echo through the woods. Slowing my pace, I pause and then veer off the driveway and around the house to the backyard. I come to a halt at the deck stairs and pause to listen. Eventually, I hear another distant bark.
Our dog followed them into the woods when they left on their hunting trip and hasn’t come back.
This in itself isn’t surprising. It’s what he does all day, every day. He patrols the perimeter, wanders through the woods, does whatever it is dogs do when they have a hundred acres of freedom. I gaze into the trees, remembering that there’s another barn, deeper in the woods, where ranchers used to keep cows a long time ago when they pastured on the other side of the creek.
Maybe he’s there. At least, I hope he is by the time it gets dark and the coyotes start calling. He’s used to them, but I still worry because I know what they can do if they surround a lone animal. Coyotes, in general, used to scare the fuck out of me, but not so much anymore.
I’ve seen worse than coyotes. I’ve been hunted by worse. And I’ve seen real monsters in the woods.
I glance down at my phone, now reliant on data, and then set my jaw and march toward the dense tree line.
Come on, the corner of my mouth curls, destiny’s waiting.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Brett
One Year Ago
“It shouldn’t take long,” I collapse onto the sofa with my laptop and start entering my password, “I can still send it tonight.”
“Because it’s totally finished, right?” Bowen calls from the kitchen as he walks back and forth between the sink and the counter, filling the coffee maker for the next morning.
“Exactly.”
When I attach the entire manuscript to an email and press send, it’ll feel like a weight off my chest. At least one, anyway. Colson will never be normal—whatever that means. To me, it means he won’t ever see me as anything but an obsession, a focal point on which to be eternally fixated until something catastrophic happens.
An unsustainable coping mechanism…
He’ll listen to me all day and he cares about every word I say, except for my insistence that our lives don’t fit together anymore. And that makes this unsustainable.
But you provoke him. You just lead him on, trying to relive the past and take from him the parts you like. You only make it worse.
The irony is unreal. Colson gives me Jada’s information and now she’s my opportunity to get out of that building and break away from him. But it’s for the best. Why should Bowen have to tolerate this kind of abuse? It’s enough that I go to work every day with my stalker who tried to murder me years ago. Why should he have to continue dealing with it—deal with it making me crazy—any longer than necessary? If Colson didn’t act like…himself, maybe he could finally come to terms with the fact that we can never go back to where everything started and we could move on.
But do you even want to go back? He was stalking you since before you met him…
Logic says no, I shouldn’t want to go back there, where everything started. But humans are neither logical nor rational.
I navigate to my Writing folder on my laptop, drag the cursor down the list to the folder labeled, Mountaintop, and double-click. The folder opens.
And it’s empty.
Exhaling in exasperation, I close the window and reopen it, assuming the sync is lagging for some reason.
It’s still empty.
I mutter a few curses, minimizing the window and navigating to the cloud, where I always save a copy of my latest draft. Now, I just hope I remembered to do it the last time I modified the document. I click on the Writing folder in the cloud and scroll down the list, looking for the same Mountaintop file, except this one will have the date of the most current draft after it.
But there’s nothing.
It’s gone.
Both documents are gone.
My stomach drops and all sound fades except for the blood rushing through my ears and my heart hammering in my chest, “No,” I whisper, my eyes darting over the screen as my fingers fly across the mousepad, clicking, opening, scanning, “no, no, no…”
I barely feel the cushion next to me sink down. Bowen’s holding his watch in one hand, staring down at it while pressing buttons with the other. He’s wholly oblivious to my silent panic. My lungs feel like they’re in a vise and I’m getting nauseous. This isn’t happening.
This can’t be happening.
“Bowen,” I finally find my voice, “something’s wrong.”
He looks up, glancing at my laptop and then back at me, “What?”
“It’s gone,” my voice trembles, “the book is gone.”
“What do you mean, it’s gone?” he scoffs with a smile.
I thrust my hand toward the screen in frustration, “I’m looking in the folder and it’s not there! And there’s not a copy saved in the cloud,” my voice rises the faster my heart races, “I always back it up for this reason!”
“Did you look…” Bowen glances over my shoulder, “maybe it’s…” his voice trails off as the realization sets in.
In a last-ditch effort, I navigate to the recycling bin. I scroll through the list to the end, searching for the file, hoping that I inexplicably deleted it in a moment of pure insanity and it would be sitting there, safe from permanent destruction.
But it’s not.
I click and click, typing the file name into the computer search bar over and over, waiting for it to scan the entire machine.
“What is happening?” I shout at my computer screen.
An instant later, I feel my eyes well with hot tears and my palms fly to my cheeks. Sucking in deep breaths, my muscles start to shake as I drag my fingers up and down my temples.
“Hold on, hold on,” Bowen murmurs, taking the laptop from me, “what’s the file name?”
“Mountaintop, Mountaintop!” I gasp, my mind racing.
He clicks around, trying to find what I can’t. But even he isn’t going to be able to find it. This time, he isn’t going to be able to fix this. After a couple minutes of searching, I turn to him, so worked up, I’m ready to launch off the sofa into space.
“You can’t find it, can you?” I don’t wait for him to respond, “What the fuck happened to it? It can’t have just disappeared!” I shriek.
Bowen sets the laptop down on the coffee table, “I don’t know,” he shakes his head, staring at the screen, “I don’t know.”
I collapse back into the cushions, silent, my eyes darting across the carpet, “What do I do?” I squeak, deflated and utterly defeated.
It’s not real. There has to be something I’m missing. Files don’t just disappear and vaporize into the ether. All of my other files look intact. Even if someone is as terrible with technology as I am, individual files don’t just disappear by themselves.
“What do I do? I don’t have anything to send her, my whole book is gone!” I cry, letting my face falls into my hands.
Bowen pulls me toward him and I turn my head, burying my face in his shoulder as he wraps his arms around me. Tears and snot leak out of every hole in my face, soaking into Bowen’s grey t-shirt.
“Hey,” he speaks softly into my ear, “it’s going to be OK.”
I sit up and sniffle as much snot as I can out of my nose and into my throat. I’m trying to compose myself, but to no avail.
“How is it going to be OK?” I drag my fingers across the undersides of my eyes and lean over my laptop in another feeble attempt to locate my missing file.
Maybe if I keep clicking around, my book will miraculously appear again.
“Just write it again,” Bowen shrugs, “you have time now.”
I freeze and knit my brow in confusion, “What?”
“Didn’t you give your notice?” he asks.
It suddenly occurs to me that I still have my job. I had meetings this morning, which lasted longer than expected, then Eric and Nate came into my office to ask a question and ended up staying for an hour, veering off into conversations that didn’t even concern me. I totally forgot about requesting a meeting with Dave until late afternoon, and by that time he was nowhere to be found.
“No,” I sit back, wiping the remaining tears from my eyes, “I didn’t get to talk to Dave today. What do you mean, write it again?”
I don’t know whether Bowen’s making an ill-timed joke or if he’s serious. How can he be serious? This is a disaster—a catastrophe. An agent wants my book and I have nothing to give her anymore because it’s gone. And Bowen’s telling me to just rewrite an entire book? You don’t have to be any kind of author to know how ridiculous it sounds to say, just write it again.
“I understand, this is really bad,” he bows his head to meet my eyes, “but isn’t this why you’re resigning—so you have the time to write?”
“Yeah,” I scoff, “because I had a finished book. Now, it’s gone! I don’t have anything!”
“Why didn’t you get to talk to Dave?”
I feel like I’m talking to myself. Why is Bowen so hung up on my derailed plans for quitting my job? The worst possible thing has just happened to me, only second to the death of a loved one, or losing a best friend...
All of that time, all of that work is gone.
I slam my palm down on the sofa cushion, “I don’t care about any of that right now!” I snap.
Bowen rocks forward and stands up, unfazed by my sudden outburst.
He starts to fasten his watch back around his wrist, “Yeah, and if you’d quit melting down for a minute, I’m trying to tell you it’s not the end of the world.”
I jump up with a start. Why is he so calm? Why doesn’t he care that my book is gone, like it never existed?
“I’ve been working on this book for years!” I cry, “And now someone’s interested and there’s nothing! I’ll never get this opportunity again! Why don’t you care?”
I’m losing it. And what’s more, I can’t handle the fact that Bowen doesn’t seem as upset as me. Not that I want him freaking out alongside me, but I need to know he cares and for his strong, calming influence to bring me back down. But right now, he has as much of an emotional response as Waylon does when he’s baking in the sun.
Suddenly, Bowen spins around, “Care?” Something strikes a nerve, setting him off. “All I do is care about you!” He thrusts his finger toward the garage door, “That car outside, this house you live in, all the money I make helps you—so you don’t have to work for someone else the rest of your life! And you’re sitting here asking why I’m not more upset?” He’s incredulous, “I should ask why you are! Why do you want to stay there when you could be doing what you want? I’m giving that to you!”
Staring at him, wide-eyed, I’m so overwhelmed that I can barely process his words, “I know you care,” I say wearily, “I just—why is this happening?” I whisper as my voice cracks.
“I don’t know, Brett,” Bowen replies with a shrug, “did you do it?”
I raise my head, pausing in confusion, “What?”
Bowen nods to me, “Did you go in and delete your file? You said you’ve been feeling off lately…”
I catapult myself off the sofa, “Why the hell would I do that?” Now it’s my turn to be incredulous.
“Stockholm Syndrome?” he deadpans.
My eyes round at Bowen, staring back at me with the same look in his eyes as he had a week ago in our kitchen. He slowly tilts his head, studying me with judgement and contempt while he waits for a reaction. My mouth opens, but nothing comes out but the sound of my enraged breaths creaking out of my chest.
My jaw tightens and I feel the blood rushing to my face, “How dare you,” I croak between breaths, barely able to raise my voice.
“No?” Bowen is undeterred.
He might even sound entertained if it weren’t for the ominous shadow settling behind his eyes.
“How fucking dare you!” my chest heaves with rage as I suck in one deep breath after another, “I am so tired of thinking about Colson Lutz!” I shriek across the living room.
Bowen takes a step toward me, “You’re tired of thinking about Colson Lutz?” His eyes narrow and he lowers his voice to a growl, “Please, Brett, ask me how tired I am of thinking about Colson Lutz.”
But I can’t ask him. I can’t even speak. So, I do the only thing I can think of. I stagger backward across the carpet until I can’t keep my composure anymore. Then I turn and escape down the dark hallway to the bedroom. I slam the bathroom door shut, lock the door, and flip the shower handle as I pace across the tile erratically, peeling off my clothes.
There’s an unexplainable safety under a shower stream. It’s loud enough to muffle your cries and miraculously washes tears off a drenched face like they were never there. If you cry in a shower, it’s like it never happened, right? I can sit on that ceramic tile forever and pretend I can wash all my problems off of me like mud and watch them disappear down the drain. I can wrap myself in its scalding blanket and breathe in its steam like it’ll make me forget everything. Showers are supposed to bring us back to life.
But this one won’t.
Because when I step out onto the tile, I see my phone light up in my pile of clothes. And when I pluck it from the folds of my jeans to look at it, any semblance of emotional restoration quickly fades.
UNKNOWN (6:24PM): Do you miss me yet Honeybee?
What? How…
I stare at my phone, utterly stunned. It’s like…how is he sending me this right now? Does he know what just happened? How does he know? Did he…
No, that makes absolutely no sense. I shake my head in disgust as more tears well in my eyes. I don’t even care that Colson texts me from some stupid hidden number anymore. It’s just a game to him and I’ve gotten used to it, like every other creepy, inappropriate thing he does.
I start tapping my screen furiously as more tears begin to fall.
ME (6:25PM): Fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Hollow Watcher
One Year Ago
It’s a surreal feeling being inside his house. And what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon?
Based on his recent behavior, I should’ve started visiting much sooner. Because that’s the last fucking time I let him get away with treating Brett like his own personal cum dumpster.
Sometimes I want to shake her, scream in her face, and demand to know what the hell she’s doing. But then I remember she doesn’t know the whole story.
Not yet.
I can’t be too angry because she doesn’t know who he really is and what he’s done. But she will, soon enough.
Chess, not checkers.
But, I swear, if he gets rough with her again—like I do—I’ll scrap this entire plan and burn his fucking house down with him inside. I bet his poor little sister will really cry over him then.
She’s going to pay for this, too. All of them are going to pay for what they’ve done.
I can’t dwell on that, though, I have work to do. I’m busy admiring what he’s done with the place. It almost makes him seem half normal. I start in his bedroom, slowly taking in every single item, one by one. I wonder if he was always this clean or if he had to adapt out of necessity. You can’t attract someone of Brett’s caliber by being any old slob. As I sweep my hand along the edge of his bed, I wonder how dark he likes it when he sleeps. I hope he likes it pitch-black, because that’s where he’s going to end up by the time I’m through dismantling and laying waste to his entire life.
After making my way back to the living room, I walk the perimeter, examining every single thing on the walls. His dog peeks around the corner of the sofa, having just come from the kitchen. He lumbers over to me for another scratch behind the ears. Hopefully he’s not supposed to be a guard dog, because if so, he’s a pretty shitty one. When I popped the door to come inside, he looked more excited than anything. But he’s cute as hell, so I sat down and petted him for a while before taking my tour.
I’m in no rush—I know his master will be gone for a while and my phone will go off if the cameras I have outside detect anyone who crosses the driveway.
Continuing along the wall, I pause at a photo sitting on one of the shelves. I recognize the people in it. In fact, when I glance around the room, I recognize everyone in his photos. They’re more or less all the same people. But there’s a stark difference between their faces before and their faces after it happened. So stark, in fact, that I freeze when I come to one particular picture on his wall. I stare at it, not moving, for I don’t even know how long.
That. Fucking. Psycho.
How fucking dare he have this picture hanging on his wall, in his house, so he can look at it every single day.
In one instantaneous jerk, I slam my palm against the picture, breaking the glass. Slowly, I lift my hand from the frame and let the pieces fall silently to the carpet. Then, I reach into my pocket and take out my knife, flipping open the blade with a satisfying click.
I wasn’t the craftiest kid in school, but today I’ll do some of my best work just for him. After I finish cutting and pasting shapes, I move on to some painting. I reach into the front pocket of my black hoodie and retrieve a can of spray paint. Red seems the most appropriate for the occasion.
I stroll around the room, searching for the best canvas, until I decide on the strip of wall above the hallway leading to the front door. After dragging a chair over, I start swishing the paint spray over the wall in smooth, curvy motions until I’ve spelled out the two words that will, no doubt, land like bombs in Dresden in his living room. I step down from the chair to admire my artwork. It’s pretty impressive, and I wish I could be here in person when he sees it, along with the wreckage of memories I’ve made into custom artwork just for him.
